“As for the individual named in the article this morning, the misconduct in this case literally makes me sick to my stomach,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said Thursday. | Ed Reed for the Office of Mayor Bill de Blasio

De Blasio says he was 'disgusted' with aide after sexual harassment complaint

Mayor Bill de Blasio defended his administration’s decision to allow a senior aide to resign after he was accused of sexually harassing two women, saying firing him would have exposed the identity of his alleged victims.

De Blasio made the comments during a press conference in the Blue Room of City Hall on Thursday, after The New York Times published a story detailing how the administration handled the complaint.

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According to that report, Kevin O’Brien resigned from his $220,652-a-year position as acting chief of staff in February of last year after complaints of sexual harassment filed by two female employees were substantiated in an investigation.

“As for the individual named in the article this morning, the misconduct in this case literally makes me sick to my stomach,” de Blasio said Thursday. “Angry does not describe my view and I’m livid. I’m disgusted by what happened, I am deeply disappointed in this individual.”

De Blasio did not elaborate on O'Brien's specific behavior. He was quietly forced to resign from his post, but was allowed to collect the remainder of his unpaid vacation days.

“When you terminate someone, that can be challenged and the offer to resign was one that would take the risk that he would challenge the termination away,” said First Assistant Corporation Counsel Georgia Pestana. “If you challenge the termination, the women would likely have been exposed. So my interest was always to protect them and accepting his resignation in lieu of termination was the choice that I made in order to reduce the risk for those women.”

At the time, City Hall did not announce his departure or the reason for it. Officials have declined to provide details of the complaints lodged against O’Brien, saying that information could also risk exposing the complainants’ identities.

After leaving municipal government, O’Brien landed a job at Hilltop Public Solutions — a political consulting and lobbying firm founded by Nick Baldick, once a close ally of de Blasio. The mayor said Thursday he and Baldick are not in close communication.

"I don’t talk to him that often and only recently did I even know that Mr. O’Brien had gone to work for him," the mayor said.

Hilltop said Thursday O'Brien had been fired from his job there.

"Our firm had no knowledge of Kevin’s behavior when he was hired in April of 2018. We only learned about it recently as a result of the Times reporting. Kevin is no longer with Hilltop Public Solutions,” a spokesperson said in a statement.

O’Brien’s ouster from City Hall took place at the height of the #MeToo movement last year. It also happened as City Hall dealt with a public relations problem of its own. Asked about the high rate of sexual harassment allegations coming from the city's Department of Education, de Blasio suggested the complaints were in part the result of a “hyper complaint dynamic.”